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In a state wide Wisconsin public employee protest, that has at times appeared to be a teachers strike - where a large number of educators simply ditched class like juvenile delinquents - the majority of the antagonists claim that they are fighting for freedom. But is this truly the case? (foxnews.com "Wisconsin Protests Leave Districts Scrambling to Staff Schools")

When considering the fact that the protesting teachers' primary argument is against Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's proposal to put the practice of Collective Bargaining on the table for debate, it becomes obvious that what these union workers are actually doing is fighting against freedom, and as well, this nation's democratic process.

President Barack Obama has decided to support the protests, and when one studies the structure of the Wisconsin educators union, it is easy to see why. Because, basically any victory for government employees would certainly be considered a victory for Obama in his eyes. It appears that regardless of just how disparate and fiscally unsound any socialist-style reform may appear, it rarely seems to deter Obama from chasing it like a skunk down a rabbit hole.

Furthermore, the Democrats in Wisconsin's State Legislature have employed one of the most underhanded and repressive tactics to date, by absconding to Illinois in order to completely silence any real debate on the issue. Their intention is to attempt stalling what appears to be an imminent passage of the Wisconsin Budget Repair bill. It is truly alarming that this would actually be considered, let alone acted upon, by anyone in this nation's government. Wisconsin would certainly be a state to avoid if it were not for Walker and his kind.

The Wisconsin bill could go a long way in helping to balance the budget, and reduce the $3,600,000,000 deficit the state is operating under. Primarily by reducing inequitable and unsustainable compensation for government employees - who by the way have far too often proven to be indifferent to waste and incompetence in their ranks. One example being Shirley Sherrod who said to a NAACP audience "apply for a federal government job" because as she pointed out, even with huge deficits the government never lays anyone off.

Moreover, the fact is that this bill will also promote a more meritorious policy of requiring that the nation's education system begin to operate in the best interest of the students who are there to learn, rather than the political endeavors of unions and the personal compensation of the staff.

There are many things to consider, but before getting into the truly alarming implications, it is necessary to point out that the average principal in the Wisconsin public school system earns over $100,000 per year; teachers make over $80,000, and support staff averages approximately $65,000 to $95,000 for a typical school year.

Furthermore, that typical work schedule only operates from September to June. Staff whom work during the summer vacation are likely compensated in addition to their regular salary.

The principal at Burlington High, in the Burlington Area School district earns just under $139,000 annually. The principal for Nettie E. Karcher School in the same district earns just over $123,000 per year. (Journal Sentinel watchdog website @ jsonline.com).

However, the district administrator, Ronald Jandura pulls down $167,091 per year, with the assistant administrator, Patricia Hoffman, making just above $150,000, and the district business manager, Peter Smet, rounding it out at $148,512.

Teaching staff in the Milwaukee School District are paid between $88,000 and $100,000 per year. The guidance counselor for Alliance High is makes $85,000, and the Program Coordinator takes in $113,000.

These public employees certainly appear to be well compensated for their efforts. But then, what is most important is just what are tax payers getting for their money? Actual staff performance, rather than compensation or benefits, is what truly begins to come into question when one realizes that test scores and academic progress have been declining almost since trade unions became legal representatives for employees of the American School system.

The state-wide teachers union - Wisconsin Education Association Counsel (WEAC) - has been representing educators since 1853, and boasts a current membership of approximately 98,000 public education employees. This means that the standard of education has been literally constrained to a group mentality of government intrusion for nearly 160 years in Wisconsin alone.

Furthermore, WEAC's member book clearly exposes high levels of political presence within the average school district. It instructs teachers, and support staff, to rely entirely on government involvement, with statements such as "By nature of your profession, public policy affects just about everything you do. When school funding reductions result in more students in your classroom or cutbacks in essential programs and support services - it affects you, and Wisconsin's students."

However, by contrast all wise Americans should first expect educators to think a bit deeper and dissect the actual nature of various cutbacks, rather than simply taking the position that pressure needs to be applied to the system of government, demanding for more funding, as the only way to create a proper education system.

By default alone, school staff then tends to gravitate toward unconstitutional strategies such as "collective bargaining rights", rather than seeking to constuct and implement more effective and efficient means of educating students.

It has been the veritable free-ride mentality by government employees which has proliferated so much waste, lethargy and incompetence in the public sector

Not that public employees shouldn't be generously compensated, but that their performance should be based on the same benchmarks, and subject to the same rigors, as employees in the private sector. Allowing public employees to engage in collective bargaining sets the stage for excess and misfeasance because there is no inherent structure of checks and balances.

Most politicians see the tax coffers as veritable money trees, and therefore if a proposed project is deemed by them to be an imperative mechanism that must be funded at all costs, then the money tree will be shaken until it produces the necessary revenues.

There are few variations of this mentality, and public employees often engage in the same socialist rhetoric, often without even realizing it. Truth be told, this author has been privy to various conversations among honorable public workers who were essentially forced to take time off with pay, or accept excess compensation they were confident was not warranted - and in many respects illegal - simply because if particular budge surpluses were not spent, then the following year's budget would be reduced accordingly.

This is actually a common practice in government. There are myriad federal and state programs, agenies and pilot projects which are over-funded due to "erring on the side of caution", and by legislators and administrators who then justify either pilfering the overage, or simply directing it to other pet, or defunct, projects as a means of obstructing fiscal conservation.

Incidentally, the logo for WEAC is a pyramid superimposed over a circle. This is important because it should begin to be understood that the pyramid may be a great design for erecting a diffuse diagram, or star map, but it is a poor model for a societal structure or group hierarchy.

The pyramid schematic - or scheme - when applied to a social structure, purports that the top is most important and solely superior to succeeding lower levels. This is easily witnessed in the average Trade Union where seniority rules. When in truth, as one ascends toward the top of a pyramid, the capabilities and strength decrease. For example; the cap stone on any pyramid would be quickly crushed to dust if it were used to replace on of the foundation stones at the base.

Moreover, this author's average experience at union jobs has typically been one of exasperated employers who are constantly disappointed by underperforming senior members who still get the best shifts and highest pay. Or frustrated by insubordinate and surly staff who cannot be terminated or demoted, due to mandates for Affirmative Action ratios and gender equanimity, regardless of underachiever's actual job performance or eligibility.

The WEAC handbook also states "Whether it is school funding reform, health care reform, licensure and professional development, working together to close achievement gaps, or organizing for fairer contracts - we are strongest when we stand together."

Unfortunately, once again this is where the weakness lies, and this type of mentality undermines the primary goal of increasing efficiency by ignoring the true issues, and opting to simply pressure the government to throw more money at a substandard system.

This promotes increasing government acclimatization of the school curriculum to reflect the budget, rather than vice versa. Which then places all accounting upon the one entity that can, absent the will of the people, often move to circumvent Constitutional mandates which are specifically designed to restrain any such legislative agenda.

This promotes the political environment where candidates get elected by employing slogans and platforms that can further impose political pressure upon the democratic process, thereby ensuring that politicians will routinely promise many things they can never deliver, if and typically, when those promises culminate in their election to office.

What is most alarming, however, is the fact that the incessant pandering - by various public employee unions - to legislators and state departments, is extending the reach of government far beyond what even the average Tea Party Patriot realizes.

The fact that for nearly two centuries education professionals have opted to bargain for more money, reduced workloads, and increased benefits from the government - thereby demanding it be granted further unconstitutional powers each and every year - rather than seek to promote increased fiscal soundness, fidelity and finesse in the education system has thrown the entire nation into an educational tailspin, as evidenced by decreasing test scores, increasing recidivism, burgeoning drop-out rates, decades of bullying and social distortion among the nation's children and adolescents, escalated teen pregnancies, extremism and murders on campuses, pandemic alcohol and drug abuse, disinterest in core social sciences, and many other depreciative derivations.

This has also fostered a "join or die" mentality where the union - or group - is seen to be the most effective means of creating strength in the system. However, this is what promotes a weakening structure, and seduces members of the group with promises of a collective force which can impose its combined power to change what is wrong with the system, rather than a pervading presence of practicality where intuition and intellectual investments are seen as the primary contributing factors which, by inherent design, are critical to cultivating an environment where change is never coaxed or forced, but simply allowed to occur as evolution dictates.

All flowery speech aside, the basic underlying mission of the WEAC is collectivist and socialist movement, which is actually in complete contrast to the Constitution's primary tenets of respect for, and empowerment of, the individual.

The U.S. Constitution, in most every sense, quite easily and naturally compensates for nearly every disparity that has ever, or can ever, erupted within this society. Moreover, it has typically been the lack of adherence to this document, which both caused/es such disparites, and then exacerbates them to the extreme; sometimes even parsing the abuse with cries for new amendments that will only further complicate this nation's supreme law of the land.

This is why there is currently a rather lengthy list of very intelligent and magnanimous teachings or concepts which will never see the inside of a classroom because there is a group mentality that is capable of ousting any true facilitator of thought who dares engage students in such allegedly "experimental" knowledge. Furthermore, this is why various perversions and preposterous palatability's are being forced into the curriculum, regardless of the fact that they are not based on much more than politicized issues and correctness.

In all reality, the fact is that the group mentality, in almost every sense, is typically resistant to change. While it is true that the sustained pressure of a large enough group can force a desired action or reaction, the majority of this "change" is, far too often simply diverted to a confluent, and generally less imperative, area of negligence which eventually becomes just as deviant and destructive, if not worse so, as the underlying, contributory disparity.

This "problem-reaction-solution" mechanism, inherent within a socialistic structure, is what has placed this society on such a perilous course where as time progresses the social order becomes more and more complex, rather than less and less so as should be the case.

The claim that the Wisconsin protests are seeking to protect, or defend, freedom, is actually incorrect. The protests are unfortunately being propagated by those who are simply misinterpreting what freedom truly means, and the duties it is bound to. Freedom isn't free. Not because one need fight to keep it, for that is called "emancipation", and it only need be engaged once. After that, the nation must work diligently each and every day simply to sustain and nurture that freedom with equative reasoning which instructs all involved that truly the ends never justifies the means, for it can only ever reflect them.

The fact is that freedom is such that it naturally promotes rationality and self reliance to the degree that critical thinking becomes the primary merit within a society that is bound thus-wise to just and moral, and therefore logical, action. Freedom is actually what grants the human genome the will to act as the species was designed, with no prerequisite demands for compliance in place, but rather a diligent delivery of absolute knowledge that is capable of enabling the succeeding generations to increase the ability to expound upon unerring and eternal wisdom that will sustain this species into the next thousand millennia ... and far beyond the stars.

References:

Journal Sentinel @ http://www.jsonline.com/watchdog/dataondemand/33534649.html?appSession=132283352940849

Wisconsin Education Counsel Handbook @ weac.com

Fox News; "Wisconsin Protests Leave Districts Scrambling to Staff Schools" @ http://politics.blogs.foxnews.com/2011/02/21/wisconsin-protests-leave-districts-scrambling-staff-schools